A Tale of 2 Sony's : How Jumanji became a Hit , while Ghostbusters Failed.

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A Tale of 2 Sony's : How Jumanji became a Hit , while Ghostbusters Failed.

In 2 years , 2 different films took a chance at creating film franchises. Both films arrived among a lot of media and anger from the fans of the originals. With folks questioning how or why Sony would push both films out without key beloved stars who had passed on. In fact Sony seemed destined to roll the dice and come up snake eyes twice.

Back in 2016 , Sony rolled the dice on the $140+ million dollar "Ghostbusters" remake. The film caught terrible fire from critics and fans alike that spring . The film sadly would never recover from the fan backlash. There has been countless ways how Ghostbusters failed from a terrible trailer that was confusing to a media campaign that was so ill-advised it turned away customers.

But were gonna look at some aspects on why this film fared compared to Jumanji.

No Clear defined rolls for characters - Every comedy has the straight person (who can be sarcastic funny) , the comedic funny one , the nerdy smart one etc. The original Ghostbusters had that as Winston was the straight person in the film. Peter Venkman was the sarcastic funny guy. Ray Stanz was the silly comedic one at times and Egon was the brilliant smart one. But they all had defined roles as one youtuber discussed in an indepth video months after this film bombed.

Ghostbusters 2016 had all 4 competing for the same role it seems in clips shown of them trying to be funny , at all times. Its been claimed by sources that Feig allowed all 4 funny ladies to try and ad-lib non-stop. That they'd let them go and just try to improv everything. One comical story was Feig allowed a camera to run for hours hoping for brilliance in a diner , but only got 20-30 seconds of footage.

By allowing the actors to run wild with no real defined roles and saying , this is the film ; this remake fell apart. Compared to the original fans knew what to expect of characters.

Creating a Silly Crusade : With negative reaction to a trailer and people citing how terrible it appeared , Sony approved a marketing campaign that demonized half the audience. The idea was to rally people behind a central message and improve nothing it seems. To make the negative backlash be painted as sexist , misogynistic trolls. While yes there was some misogynistic trolls that hated the film , the over-all stance seemed to imply everyone who didn't want to see the film as one. This backfired in such a colossal way that people were attacked just for saying they didn't wanna see the film.

Things got so insane that when James Rolfe (Angry Video Game Nerd) made a video claiming he had no intentions of seeing the new film he was attacked online and demonized. One critic labelled him a soft sexist for not wanting to watch Ghostbusters. This caused even more anger towards the film as it approached. The actresses themselves didn't help as several lines in an interview that Melissa McCarthy gave as more labeling why people didn't seem to like the film. Sony a couple weeks before the film sensed things were bad , as early estimates had the film opening with $30-40 million.

Sony Proclaims Success ...too soon : Sony quickly went to work and changed the advertising campaign. Realizing that "Answer the Call" and that using the campaign to create a social campaign to claim only angry trolls hated the new Ghostbusters ; they saw projections at $30-40 million. They had alienated half the audience and approached it using the fun aspect improving ads on NBA Championship game series and Papa Johns. All in a move to redo the ad campaign.

This seemed to help and Sony seemed to believe they had a hit on their hands when the film arrived with a $46.5 million dollar opening.

“We’re ecstatic with this opening. We have successfully restarted an important brand,” said Josh Greenstein, Sony’s worldwide marketing and distribution president. “We have lots of room to run in the coming weeks as the big comedy in the marketplace.”

They were wrong. Within weeks the film started to slide down the box office chart that summer. People mused that Sony felt that Ghostbusters would perform like Paul Feig's "Bridemaids" and do $200 million slowly across the summer like his prior success. They were wrong. The film limped to $127+ million domestically and didn't perform internationally.

Its only later Sony admitted the film was a box office dud. Months later and pretty much delayed any talk of a sequel awhile.

Meanwhile at the same period Sony had Jumanji : Welcome to the Jungle in development. This had to worry Sony as they watched Ghostbusters go down in flames a year earlier. Now there were redoing a classic , replacing a beloved actor in Robin Williams. But unlike Ghostbusters , they approached this film with a new way of doing business.

No Grand Schemes : Sony envisioned sequels and more behind Ghostbusters. They even handed a shitty video game to a company that filed bankruptcy within months. But with Jumanji : WTJ , they didn't. In fact Sony just wanted to make a stand alone film and nothing that said this would be the start of anything big. In fact they left an extra scene that likely will now go on home video if they choose to do it.

There was no video game tie-ins or anything. Sony had gambled too much on Ghostbusters and felt they had a huge hit and this led them into being more conservative. In fact the budget for Jumanji : WTJ was $50+ million less than Ghostbusters ! In every case Sony seemed to be bracing for a film that could not be a hit and that they gambled a $90+ million dollar budget behind at Christmas.

Defined Roles : The biggest move Sony made was to set defined roles with the cast from the get go. By casting Dwayne Johnson folks knew he would be the hunky action star of the film. Then they went and got over the top comedian Kevin Hart. And here is where those behind this film was brilliant ...they had seen that a big reason Ghostbusters lost in 2016 was the duo of Kevin Hart & Dwayne Johnson in the film Central Intelligence. So they cast both men in key roles to play off each other. Then they cast Jack Black as the nerdy comedic relief. The final piece was casting the beautiful Karen Gillan who's star is on the rise.

They quickly defined in casting who these people would play without a trailer. They had established who these people would be from group photos before a trailer was released. Unlike Ghostbusters when a film even came out and struggled there , this one had the characters nailed for people to see.

A Not so good Trailer , re-worked :

Now Sony had to be scared , the 1st trailer released was terrible for them to see. In fact 7,000+ people hated it and only 40,000+ liked the 1st trailer. Compared to the 301,000+ up votes for Ghostbusters. (Sure there was a million plus down votes , but as a whole Ghostbusters was viewed 44 million times , compared to 5.7+ million views for Jumanji : WTJ.

The original trailer seemed to play up a Breakfast Club , comedy vibe which turned many off. Weeks before release Sony had a choice to make. Either go down with yet another ill-advised marketing campaign or play up what they had. Sony wisely played up who they had...they had THE ROCK. It meant action , over the top explosions and more action.

Sony realized if they were gonna sell this film they had to sell the action 1st , comedy 2nd. This aspect seemed to click as people got trailer sports of Hart & Johnson. They also had them go on talk shows together and sell the film. Because they realized these 2 would power the film at the box office.

Box Office : The 1st Jumanji film did $100+ million at box office domestically and would go on to do $262+ million worldwide. The pressure was on for this one to do as good (if not better). Going into its 4th weekend Jumanji : WTJ is now poised to possible make close to $275-300 million domestically. Worldwide the film has passed the $550+ million total.

Sony by practicing restraint and not going full force seemed to create a hit film and now there is talk on how to get a sequel done and continue. Unlike the situation with Ghostbusters in 2016 , this film seemed to catch on with audiences.

OVERALL : Its pretty clear the people behind Jumanji as a whole were smarter , knew how to market a film and knew casting where to go. And the film was cheaper to do as well. I'm sure their stock is through the roof and Sony likely is thinking , why didn't we get them for the Ghostbusters relaunch ? Those thoughts have to be in Sony's mind if there is a future Ghostbusters film ahead.

"The story so far: As usual, Ginger and I are engaged in our quest to find out what the hell is going on and save humanity from my nemesis, some bastard who is presumably responsible." - Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.

I really don't think jumanji was that muce better than Ghostbusters...

From what I've heard both succeed and being popcorn munchers. Enjoyable but not much depth. Of course when you have the Rock and Karen Gillan you've already got the fanservice. Ghostbusts had Chris Hemsworth as far as female directed fanservice goes.

The Rock, Kevin Hart and Jack Black combined are much bigger pulls than the SNL ladies.

Also, people seemed to connect to the teenagers very well and thought the four leads captured each teenager's essence successfully. It was also the perfect "family adventure film" for the holiday season.

The Rock, Kevin Hart and Jack Black combined are much bigger pulls than the SNL ladies.

Also, people seemed to connect to the teenagers very well and thought the four leads captured each teenager's essence successfully. It was also the perfect "family adventure film" for the holiday season.

I wouldn't call it perfect it had lot of juvenile jokes I can see a lot of people not whanting there kid's to see.

By the standard definition of a cinema hit Ghostbusters would have repaid its investors by now, and will probably see a profit down the line. (The vast majority of movies don't make as much at the box office as Ghostbusters did.) The other less tangible definition, that of recall, well clearly it was a hit because there is a thread right here talking about it in relation to a current movie.

Also, some of the "juvenile humor" like Bethany's penis jokes are some of the best of the kind I've ever come across.

Ya I know I never said it did matter just that it's not a perfect family movie. Allso I disagree on the jokes being the best of it's kind in my opinion sum of the comdey didn't work and was the weakest parts of the movie I did however injoy the movie way more than I thought I would but it's still nothing I'd pay for it's a Rental at best.

By the standard definition of a cinema hit Ghostbusters would have repaid its investors by now, and will probably see a profit down the line. (The vast majority of movies don't make as much at the box office as Ghostbusters did.) The other less tangible definition, that of recall, well clearly it was a hit because there is a thread right here talking about it in relation to a current movie.

Jumanji was in stupid in all the right ways. The idea of making it not just a video game but a bad video game was a great idea imo. The cas is great and the avatr angle got us to see Actors play way off type. The rock is a whiney Jewish kid and Jack black is a teenage girl. Kevin Jart kinda ends up juat being KevinHart but luckily for me i think hes hilarious so it works anyway. Ive only seen Gillian in GOTG so iono how ff type she was but she was good.

I loves Jumanji im so glad i watched it right after Star Wars and not before. Because i thought TLJ was Meh but if i saw Jumanji right before i think i woulda liked the movie less. But instead after sitting through that long movie i got some non stop fun in Jumanji. At this point any movie the rock and Hart do together will get my money.